Odessa, the gate of Tsarist Russia to the Black Sea, was an important merchant centre of the 19th century orientated towards the trade of grain. The presence of the Greeks in the city and their activities played a vital role in the emergence of a national movement in the eve of the Greek War of Inependence in 1821. The Greeks founded flourishing merchant houses there, whereas they also played a very important role in the city’s social and intellectual life.

The largest socioeconomic, political and cultural centre of the north-western edge of the Black Sea was Olbia Pontica. The name with which it was earlier known (i.e. from the time of its establishment) was Borysthenes. Later, mainly after the third quarter of the 6th cent. BC, the phrase Olbie polis (hence Olbiopolis) was shortened to Olbie, replacing the earlier name Borysthenes; the later name did not disappear altogether though.

Orgame is situated on the estuary of the Danube. The city was recently identified thanks to archaeological evidence. It is one of the earliest purely Greek colonies in the Black Sea. Successive habitation until the 7th century makes it difficult to extract conclusions about the urban network and the economic and political life of the city in Antiquity. The necropolis of Orgame is one of the best excavated in the wider region.

The renowned Latin poet Ovid was born in 43 BC and belonged to an equestrian family. He was sent to Rome for his education, but despite the opposition of his father, he renounced a political career and chose poetry. An extraordinary talent, he was famous in the elite circles of the Roman society. Ovid had just completed the 15 books of Metamorphoses and the first books of Fasti when he was banished from his beloved Rome to the west coast of the Black Sea. His works Tristia and Pontica/Epistulae...